Filling a vacuum in a post-Brexit world with thoughtful centre-right political commentary from a senior political adviser who is founder of an international marketing and media relations consultancy.
Nigel Farage must be rubbing his hands with glee even as he faces a formal enquiry into his £5 million gift from a crypto billionaire. Whatever Reform and its leader get up to it cannot be more embarrassing than the current activities of the Labour Party.
Starmer maybe a decent person but to date he has been a poor prime minister. Does this merit a challenge to his leadership? Would his colleagues be any better? Almost certainly not and nothing justifies the current political circus as the country struggles with multiple problems.
Labour has got itself into an awful mess as it grapples with changing its leader. Equal support for Starmer, Burnham and Streeting. Ministers and backbench MPs in equal numbers calling for Starmer to go or stay. As authority drains away from Starmer’s government, it now seems less likely Starmer will hold on. It feels as if the excitable media is getting its way.
Whilst we await Streeting’s rush to challenge Starmer before Burnham gets into parliament you may ask why doesn’t he concentrate on turning round the NHS? Why doesn’t Burnham concentrate on running Manchester? Why doesn’t Angela Rayner concentrate on sorting out her tax affairs? Why doesn’t the government govern?
Changing prime ministers every five minutes is no solution to improving how the country is run. Just ask the Tories. The country currently feels ungovernable, certainly not governable by second rate politicians and the public are entitled to despair. Not only over the behaviour of the Labour Party but because there seems no other alternative.
That 25% support for Reform, putting it in first place in the polls looks more significant by the hour although not yet enough.
Not yet two years after a general election, political gridlock? Is that now the only option? How thoroughly depressing.
No pictures today. The blog is being written on a ship, mid-Atlantic…
But with access to all the usual news channels it is easy to track the UK’s local election results. And, well, no surprises really. All the parties mostly did as expected. Confirmation of a wholly fractured electoral landscape was made clear.
First, Reform. With c25% of the vote their success is of course a reflection of voter disillusionment with established parties. They are now in the driving seat to run a swathe of councils. Their record to date has often been chaotic although making little fundamental difference to any council’s activities. Only time will tell if they are able to survive voter scrutiny. We will hear far more from Farage in the coming months but he has one major problem. He and his party are loathed by three quarters of the public and this isn’t going to change between now and the General Election.
For the other parties, ex Labour, the Tories’ electoral irrelevance was confirmed. The disappointing performance of the LibDems highlighted for anybody taking notice. The Greens and SNP did well but fell short of the more optimistic expectations. Plaid Cymru saw off Reform in Wales. Good for them. Remember, at one stage, Reform was expected to come top.
That only leaves Labour… umm…
The elections were a disaster for the government. The sheer unpopularity of Starmer and his ineffectual administration stripped Labour bare.
The path to recovery, however, is really quite simple. Lay out a clear policy plan and deliver. Is Starmer the man to do this? Almost certainly not, as shown by the bizarre appointments of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman to vague government roles. But, there is no alternative amongst his colleagues. They are mostly all tainted, more left-wing or useless. Often all three and that includes Andy Burnham. Oh dear indeed…
Populists thrive when moderates fail. Speak to the Democrats about Trump is one glaring example. So, in this respect, it was a good night for Reform. There is currently no alternative to the current mob in power including Starmer and Reform can afford to sit it out, basking in the electoral sunlight.
Starmer is likely to be safe for now. Changing prime ministers every five minutes doesn’t work. Keep Calm and Carry On or to put it another way, wait for something to turn up is probably the only option. What a choice… We are three years from a General Election. After the past week it suddenly feels just around the corner…
I am at the Tories’ party conference in Manchester this week, so it’s a quick Tuesday blog. Why am I here, you might ask? I grew up near Manchester, and I like the city. It is booming, no thanks to Andy Burnham.
As for the Tories, they are almost endearing… a small, actually quite happy band of people who are luxuriating in their irrelevance. Bars are mostly half empty, hotels are easy to book, and commercial stands at the conference are sparse, but the vibe is, well, comfortable.
In terms of hard politics, there isn’t any. Most think Badenoch will be gone by May. James Cleverly seems to have missed his chance, and that just leaves Jenrick as the next leader, giving a slightly weird speech today in his desperate need for the top job. He is clearly a fraud who will drive the few remaining moderates into the arms of the LibDems. But nobody seems to care. Who has heard of any of the other front benchers?
Mel Stride, the decent Shadow Chancellor, has managed to persuade his colleagues that it is the economy, stupid, but his policies are drowned out by immigration. The Tories now advocate leaving the ECHR and mass deportations. Hopeless.
A Reform-lite approach is a road to nowhere. Add to this, you now can’t be a parliamentary candidate unless you believe this rubbish. What happened to freedom of thought/speech so beloved of the hard-right? The circular firing squad is now fully in place. A recipe for mediocre candidates, the quality of which is already in decline, advocates of policies which either repel, or in some voters’ eyes don’t go far enough, is now being served to the electorate.
A once great party humbled, in a deep hole, handing out shovels to its few remaining supporters to keep digging. Never mind. it is easy to get to a bar and order a drink at conference nowadays. Happy irrelevance indeed…
As I head back to London from NYC, my week over here has confirmed Trump is running rampant. This time he is also well organised. With a clean sweep of Congress politics is moving to the extremes confirmed by Trump’s Cabinet post picks which are quite frankly extraordinary. Here are just a few of them:
Kristi Noem – Homeland Security Secretary. Famed for boasting about shooting her dog in a recent auto-biography, she is as hard right as you could get and will have sweeping powers to deport.
Pete Hegseth – Defense Secretary barring an alleged sexual harassment case. A former Fox News host and army veteran, he believes women should have no combat role.
Matt Gaetz – Attorney General. This appointment has shocked even Trump supporters. He is facing allegations of sex crimes, is in favour of defunding the FBI and would literally destroy legal structures in the US. Uniformly loathed, many people didn’t even know he had any legal qualifications.
Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy – joint heads of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency. The latter, former Republican nominee contender is just ridiculous, and Musk with billions in government contracts can’t move without tripping over a potential conflict of interest.
The list goes on. A fracking champion in charge of energy, an anti-vaxxer in charge of health, and a Putin sympathiser in charge of the intelligence agencies…
Politics is going to get very ugly here but America voted for it…
Trump’s intentions are clear. There will be no safe guards in place to rein him in. The only modest bright spot is John Thune winning the leadership of the Senate. An establishment Republican, he might bring some sanity to proceedings, but bearing in mind Trump will lead by terrorising any opposition, one doubts it.
The agenda is set, and America voted for it. Mass deportations, the slate of all Trump’s legal woes wiped clean, massive tax cuts with the rich getting richer, environmental regulations torn up, and vendettas pursued against any perceived enemy of Trump. Overseas, Ukraine sold out, Taiwan under greater threat, Israel allowed to run rampant and tariffs ending global free trade, in the process driving up inflation. Oh, and the Trump family and its allies preening themselves with their noses firmly in the public trough. Politics is going to get very ugly here.
As for the Democrats, their defeat is entirely their fault. Too much noise about identity politics, failing to grip illegal immigration, extremists within their ranks undermining law and order by stripping the police of powers and/or funds such as in San Francisco. Despite Biden’s decency and some policy successes, in the campaign they had nothing to say to those who should have been their core voting base. Add to that Biden stepping down too late to allow a competitive race for the Democratic nominee, and their defeat was sealed. Patronising interventions from former Democrat presidents and ridiculous endorsements from celebrities as a substitute for policy hardly helped either.
Grounds for optimism? For all the Republicans’ success, this country is pretty much split 50/50 in vote share. Hard right MAGA extremists are only polling at 6%. The rest of Trump supporters are mostly just frustrated with government and, often, rightly so. Such is the scale of the Democrats’ defeat, they must surely reform themselves. The last president to shrink the size of government was actually Clinton, who took 400,000 off the government payroll so they can change their spots. Trump only has 4 years left and may blow up well before then. Musk is already rubbing people up the wrong way, and some nominations are even shocking core Republican supporters.
Lastly, as I gladly return to London, for all of Labour’s faults, with the rise of the populist Right across democracies, the UK looks a bastion of stability and must surely embrace closer European integration… so, not all bad then…
There has been no blog for the past few weeks. The trajectory of politics has been pretty predictable and there has been nothing to add; the gradual demise of today’s Tories, the rise of Trump and the truly vile anti-West right-wing Republicans, the permanence of Putin and populism on the march in Europe.
But having spent some time with senior Tories recently, the sheer disaster awaiting them at the next Election is clearly coming into view and they know they can do nothing about it. This will be no 1992 all over again. The Tories will be routed and 1997 may evoke fond memories for them in comparison.
Ah, I hear people say, there is no appetite for Starmer. It doesn’t matter. The public is so heartedly sick of the Tories, Labour will storm it whether it is partly due to Tories staying at home (similar to 1997) or the rise of Reform UK or the rise of the LibDems in the South or the collapse of the SNP in the North.
Interestingly, Sky News do a tracking poll of 33 voters who voted Tory in 2019. Nine are switching to Labour and five to Reform. On this small sample alone, the Tory vote will be down by over 40%. Interesting, really, that we seem to be the only major democracy currently moving mostly to the left even if it is without enthusiasm.
Holding a sword… a key attribute apparently to becoming the next Tory leader…
But it can hardly be surprising. The behaviour of senior Tories is appalling, now contemplating another change at the top from the decent if increasingly politically hapless Sunak. Penny Mordaunt is the next sacrificial lamb mooted as leader, her key merit being she held a sword aloft very well at the Coronation. You really can’t write the script…
To some extent it is Sunak’s fault. He is no Tory left-winger but in trying to ingratiate himself with the Right he has simply earned their contempt. He should have stood up to them from the start. If they felt Johnson and Truss were ok why did he think they would ever accept him? Let them clear off to Reform if they have to. It will ultimately be a political dead-end.
The only silver lining, first highlighted by the excellent Stephen Bush in the FT, is that post-election there is a small chance the Tories move to the centre-ground as right-wingers amongst the grassroots head elsewhere. Certainly, analysis shows the parliamentary party will not move much to the Right in composition if it is defenestrated. Umm…, I am not so sure. It partly takes ruthlessness from moderates to seize control of the Tory Party and there is currently no evidence they are up for the fight.
Hey ho. It feels like an exciting year ahead politically but one where no one really gets what they want!
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